


Woman King

by Elise_Foster



Category: Whiplash (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Gen, Genderswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-30
Updated: 2015-05-19
Packaged: 2018-03-26 10:40:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 15,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3847855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elise_Foster/pseuds/Elise_Foster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Travis turns to Andrea and says, “Girls can’t play the drums.” Andrea frowns. “Why?” she asks. Travis shrugs. “Because they can’t. Only boys can.”  Dustin chimes in. “Yeah. Only boys can.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for my sister. When I forced her to watch the movie and then asked her what she thought, she said, "Why aren't there any girls?"
> 
> Well, there are now.
> 
> I'm really not certain about this one, but a lot of work went into it. Let me know what you guys think.

 When Andrea is seven, she hears Buddy Rich play for the first time.

 

In their Friday afternoon music class at school, they are learning about different musical genres. Their teacher, Ms. Gilpin, starts with rock and pop and country before moving on to more alien territories.

 

Mozart is their introduction to classical music. The song Ms. Gilpin plays for them is bright and crisp. As she’s listening to it, Andrea has the sensation of flying, skimming lightly across the surface of a lake made of pink bubbles. This is the picture she draws when Ms. Gilpin hands them white sheets of paper and crayons and requests that they sketch out how the music made them feel. A couple of the other students snicker at her picture when she stands up to explain it.

 

Ms. Gilpin takes the drawing from her and says, “This is perfect, Andrea. Well done.”

 

Emily Morton jabs Andrea with a pencil when she sits down. Her father has told her to ignore Emily, so this is what she does. She gets jabbed six more times before Emily gets bored. Andrea ends up with an eraser-shaped bruise on her arm.

 

After everyone has explained their pictures, there are still five minutes left in class. Ms. Gilpin drums her fingers against the CD player and then says, “Do you guys want to hear my favorite?” She doesn’t wait for an answer, just slides in another CD and presses play.

 

“This is _Rhapsody in Blue_ ,” she says, and then the song starts, and it burns brilliant patterns of color inside Andrea’s head.

 

The bell rings, and their teacher, Mrs. Harris, returns to the classroom signaling the end of music class and the end of the school day. The other children grab their backpacks and hurry (“walk, please” Mrs. Harris says “James, Katie, Ari that means you, too”) out into the hallway. Andrea doesn’t move from her desk.

 

“Andrea,” Mrs. Harris says. “Your dad is going to be waiting for you outside.”

 

“I want to hear the rest,” Andrea says, voice barely audible. “Please.”

 

“Sorry,” Ms. Gilpin says. “This is my fault. I started a piece, and we didn’t have time to finish. I don’t mind staying with her.”

 

“All right. I’ll let her dad know where she is,” Mrs. Harris says.

 

Ms. Gilpin restarts the song and comes to sit beside Andrea, perching on top of one of the desks. When it’s over, Andrea asks, “Why is it your favorite?”

 

“That’s a good question,” Ms. Gilpin says. “I suppose it’s because it was my mother’s favorite. And it makes me feel happy. Why do you like it?”

 

Andrea thinks. “It feels like fireworks,” she says.

 

Ms. Gilpin smiles. “That sounds about right.”

 

Andrea’s dad arrives. He apologizes to Ms. Gilpin while Andrea is gathering all her worksheets and folders and cramming them into her backpack.

 

On the ride home, Andrea can only talk about _Rhapsody in Blue_. The next afternoon a CD (Great Performances: Gershwin) waits on her bed. She finds her dad in his office and thanks him. “I thought you might like it,” he says. She doesn’t listen to anything else for two weeks.

 

Then, Ms. Gilpin introduces them to jazz.

 

She starts up a song she says is called _Caravan_ and hands them crayons and paper again. The song starts, and there is no way Andrea can draw what she feels. Jazz lights fires under her skin and beats wildly in her blood.

 

She has nothing to show when they go around the room to describe their pictures.

 

“How come she didn’t have to draw anything?” Emily Morton asks.

 

“Sometimes you can’t put into words—or pictures—what you feel,” Ms. Gilpin says.

 

“Cheater,” Emily mutters to Andrea’s back.

 

Ms. Gilpin asks Andrea to stay after class.

 

“It’s okay that you couldn’t draw anything,” she says. “I don’t know if I could either. All music is great. But jazz is the best. For me, it’s the best.”

 

Ms. Gilpin sends her home with CDs, and Andrea absorbs Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker and John Coltrane and Dave Brubeck and Miles Davis.

 

But when she hears Buddy Rich she knows, she knows she has to play the drums.

 

She approaches her dad on a Sunday afternoon. “I would like a drum set, please” she says. She had rehearsed this request multiple times in her head, and, now, hearing it out loud, it still sounds perfectly reasonable.

 

Her dad looks up from the paper he is grading. “You just started piano lessons.”

 

“I want to play the drums now,” she says.

 

“Andrea,” he says. “Are you sure? I don’t want to get them and then have you decide you’re bored with them a month later.”

 

“I won’t get bored with them,” she says. “I promise.”

 

Her dad sighs.

 

“Please, dad. I promise I’ll play them forever.”

 

He thinks, tapping his pen on the table. “Can you wait until your birthday?”

 

Her birthday is in one month. “Yes,” she says. “I can wait.”

 

On the calendar in her room, she writes the words “drum set” on her birthday in purple ink.

 

Early in the morning, the day she turns eight, she runs out of her bedroom to the living room, and there, sitting by the window are her drums. She runs her fingers over every inch of them and thinks “mine, mine, mine.”

 

That evening, her aunt, uncle, and cousins come over for dinner.

 

When Uncle Frank sees the drum set in the living room, he looks at Andrea’s dad and says, “Really, Jim? And I’m sure you’re going to waste money on lessons, too.”

 

Andrea watches her dad’s face tighten. “Not now,” he says. He takes the cake from Aunt Emma’s hands and walks into the kitchen.

 

Travis comes over to the set and runs his fingers across the cymbal, creating a shivery, silvery sound. He turns to Andrea and says, “Girls can’t play the drums.”

 

Andrea frowns. “Why?” she asks.

 

Travis shrugs. “Because they can’t. Only boys can.”

 

Dustin chimes in. “Yeah. Only boys can.”

 

Later, she asks her father about this. He tells her that girls can do anything boys can do. This answer is not satisfactory, so after music class on Friday, she asks Ms. Gilpin.

 

“Wait a minute,” Ms. Gilpin says. She opens up a CD case and slides out a disc. “This is Terri Lyne Carrington. Listen to her, and tell me what you think about girls playing the drums.”

 

Andrea listens. She decides her cousins are liars.

 

* * *

 

 The year Andrea turns thirteen, she has a growth spurt. She is suddenly the tallest person in her class. She does her best to make herself smaller, slouching when sitting and hunching her shoulders forward when standing.

 

The only time she ever sits up straight is when she’s practicing. She can focus only on the color and substance of the rhythms and forget about the fact that her limbs look too long for her body and that none of her clothes fit right anymore. She can forget that her body has betrayed her so completely.

 

It is maddening when she is forced to stop.

 

Her father is the one who is continually interrupting her, calling her down for dinner, reminding her that she does still have homework, asking her if she wants to see a movie, telling her that if she doesn’t do the chores that she was supposed to do, she won’t be allowed to practice for a week. She doesn’t hate her father. She just considers him one of a long line of annoyances that prevent her from doing as she pleases.

 

He calls her down to help with dinner on Saturday. She bangs out one last, loud crash on the cymbals before leaving her room.

 

She is in the middle of putting out silverware when the doorbell rings. “Andrea, could you get that?” her dad calls from the kitchen. She sighs, dumps her handful of forks on to the table, and trudges to the door.

 

The first thing her uncle says when he sees her is “Good God, Andy, how tall are you going to grow?” as if he hadn’t seen her two weeks ago. She hates being called Andy.

 

Her aunt hugs her and briefly fingers the cuff of her shirt.

 

The dinner conversation, as always, floats around Andrea but does not touch her. Because she is not required to participate, her mind returns to the charts she was learning. With her hands hidden under the table, she mimes out the hits and whispers the rhythms to herself.

 

“What are you doing?” Travis says, and then everyone is looking at her.

 

“Nothing,” she says, placing her hands back on top of the table.

 

“You’re so weird,” he says.

 

“Travis,” Aunt Emma says.

 

“Dinner tonight interrupted her practice,” her dad says.

 

Andrea is almost sure these words are meant as a defense. They sound like an apology.

 

After dinner, her uncle and cousins migrate to the living room because there is some game on. “You don’t mind, do you, Jim?” Uncle Frank had asked. It was clear he already knew the answer since Travis had turned on the TV, and Dustin had made himself comfortable on the couch. Andrea can hear them shouting (“what kind of call is that?” “the refs are totally bought”) while she is picking plates up off the table.

 

Her dad and Aunt Emma are in the kitchen. They are talking about her.

 

“She’s going to be tall,” Aunt Emma says. “But Victoria was tall, wasn’t she?”

 

“Yep,” her dad says. “Victoria was… tall.”

 

“Andrea needs new clothes,” Aunt Emma says.

 

“I know. I just don’t…” He stops. “She’s thirteen now, Emma.”

 

“Jim,” Aunt Emma says. “You just had to ask. I can take her shopping. Next Saturday maybe?”

 

“Yes, okay,” he says. “Thank you.”

 

This is how Andrea ends up being dragged all over the mall by her aunt.

 

Aunt Emma pulls sweaters and shirts and jeans from the racks. In the dressing rooms, Andrea slides on clothing and looks at herself in the mirror. She studies herself from the front and then from the side. She tries to feel at home in her own limbs. She frowns at her reflection and tears the clothing off.

 

Since none of the clothing makes her feel pretty, she goes for the next best option: clothing that will make her invisible. Aunt Emma does not question any of her choices. She does, however, purchase one red sweater. It lives its life at the back of Andrea’s closet.

 

Once Andrea has four bags filled with clothing (and one with shoes), she assumes they are done, but Aunt Emma says, “You should have some makeup.”

 

So, Andrea sits on a white chair while a girl buzzes around her talking about skin tones. Creams are slathered on her face and her eyelids. Lip gloss and mascara are applied with precision. The girl hands Andrea a mirror. Andrea looks like a drawing of herself, a glossy imitation created by someone who only had a vague sense of what her face is supposed to look like.

 

“What do you think?” the girl asks.

 

Andrea nods.

 

She goes home with a small bag that contains tiny boxes filled with tiny tubes of shiny substances that she will never use.

 

Andrea thinks of the girls who arrive at school, their hair glistening and straight, lips perfectly pink. “It’s kind of stupid,” she says.

 

“What is?” Aunt Emma asks.

 

“Putting on all this stuff just so guys will look at you,” Andrea says.

 

“That’s true. But that’s not the only reason to wear it,” Aunt Emma says.

 

“What other reason is there?” Andrea asks.

 

Aunt Emma pauses and then says, “It gives you the option of putting on a face and being someone else.”

 

Andrea doesn’t want to be herself, but she doesn’t want to be anyone else either.

 

She washes off all the makeup as soon as she gets in the house.

 

* * *

 

Her calendar has become a series of color-coded deadlines. Julliard (in blue) requires their prescreening materials by December 1. So does Eastman (in green) and Berklee (in yellow). Oberlin (in purple), the New England Conservatory (in black), and Shaffer (in red) require their materials by December 15. All the money she earned over the summer goes to application fees. The recording she creates with her instructor, Mr. Henry, is actually fairly decent.

 

She still gets rejected. Eastman is first. Then Berklee. Then Oberlin.

 

Her dad, she thinks, becomes more cheerful with every rejection email that comes in. Especially since she’s already received early admittance to Rutgers, Barnard, and NYU.

 

“They do still have music programs, Andrea,” he says.

 

“Not real music programs,” she says.

 

“Well, how many applications do you still have out?” he asks.

 

“Three,” she says. “But I’m not getting into Shaffer.”

 

“You don’t know that.”

 

“Dad,” Andrea says. “I’m not getting into Shaffer.”

 

The New England Conservatory and Julliard reject her the same week. When she gets home from her lesson on Thursday, she sees that her dad has left a printout describing Rutgers’s music department on her desk. There’s a sticky note attached that reads “take a look.” She wants to trash the papers but doesn’t. She ends up looking up their faculty. It’s really not a bad program and, anyway, who says that you have to go to a top program to get the attention of Lincoln Center? (Everyone. Everyone says this.)

 

But then there’s an email from Shaffer. She gets as far as the dates for auditions before she realizes what she’s reading. After taking a wild, bounding leap on to her bed (and nearly braining herself against the wall), she writes a reply.

 

She pounds down the stairs when her dad arrives home. He looks at her and says, “Good news?”

 

“Shaffer,” she says. “I got an audition. It’s in March. They’re going to send me a date. And a time. And I need to call Mr. Henry. Because I probably need extra lessons between now and then.”

 

Her dad stares at her.

 

“It’s Shaffer, Dad.”

 

“Yeah,” he says. He shakes his head then smiles and pulls her into a hug. “Congratulations! That’s amazing.”

 

“It’s not a guarantee or anything. They could hear me and still hate me,” she says.

 

“They wouldn’t hate you,” her dad corrects. “They might not like your drumming.”

 

“Yeah. Sure,” she says. “But I have a chance, and that’s what matters, right?”

 

“Absolutely,” he says. “But just out of curiosity, when do you have to let NYU know?”

 

“I don’t know,” she says. “April, I think. Why?”

 

“Just something to keep in mind,” he says.

 

Andrea feels her smile drip from her face. “You’re not happy,” she says.

 

“No. That’s not it,” he says. He places a hand on her shoulder. “I just want you to keep your options open.”

 

She shakes him off. “If I get into Shaffer, that’s where I’m going,” she says.

 

“Of course,” he says. “But even you said that there’s no guarantee that you’ll actually get in.”

 

Andrea has a sudden vision of the future her dad imagines for her. It is safe and practical. It is getting a useful degree and meeting a nice guy and getting a house and having a kid. It is boring as hell.

 

“The auditions will either be on the first or the second of March,” she says. “They’re going to send me an official time and date next week. I can take the bus into the city. I just thought you should know.”

 

“Andrea,” her dad says.

 

She goes back upstairs.

 

She schedules four extra lessons with Mr. Henry. Her last lesson is the night before her audition. He tells her that she’s as prepared as she’s going to get.

 

He also tells her this: “Other people will get into Shaffer because their auditions are good. But for you to get in, you’re going to have to be great. You’re going to have to be the best.”

 

She nods and wonders why everyone seems to think that good drumming necessitates having a dick.

 

Her audition is at ten thirty in the morning. Her dad drives her to the bus stop. When they arrive, she tries to climb out of the car before her dad can say anything. He stops her, wrapping his hand around her forearm.

 

“Wait, Andrea. Wait,” he says.

 

“What? The bus is going to be here any minute,” she says.

 

“I know,” he says. “Let me know when you get into the city.”

 

“Okay,” she says.

 

“Your aunt will be picking you up when you get back, so make sure that you tell her when you’re going to get in.”

 

“Okay,” she says.

 

“And let me know how the audition goes,” he says. “You’re going to do great.”

 

“Yeah. Thanks.” She slams the car door shut.

 

She arrives at the school thirty minutes early. There are other applicants wandering around. The only other drummers she sees are guys. She sits down and looks at her charts again. A female trumpet player sits down beside her. Andrea can feel her fidgeting. She taps Andrea’s arm. Andrea glances over at her.

 

“Hey,” the girl says.

 

“Hey,” Andrea replies.

 

“So, like total sausage fest, right?” she says.

 

“Sure.”

 

“Someone told me that being a girl works to my advantage. Like an affirmative action kind of thing.”

 

“Okay,” Andrea says.

 

“I mean, you’re a fucking drummer. You’re probably like one of five girls auditioning. If you don’t get in you could probably sue for discrimination or some shit.”

 

“Yeah. Maybe.”

 

It is a relief when they finally call her in. They ask her to play three pieces rather than two. She doesn’t know if this is a bad sign or not. When they thank her at the end of the audition, she says “you’re welcome” like an idiot. A woman on the panel smirks. Andrea scurries from the room.

 

She crams all of her stuff back in her bag and looks around for a bathroom. She locks herself in a stall and throws up twice.

 

Once she’s headed out of the city, she checks her phone. There is one message from her aunt (“I hope everything went well. Let me know when you need me to pick you up!”) and one from her dad (“I know it went great, but I wouldn’t mind getting a text telling me so. Love you”). She texts her aunt her arrival time. She starts a message to her dad but doesn’t send it.

 

She watches recordings of Terri Lyne Carrington the rest of the way home.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Andrea hears about Dr. Fletcher her first day at Shaffer.

 

She’s in the dining hall eating a bowl of cereal for dinner with earphones in so no one will mistake her for someone friendly.

 

There are two guys sitting a couple seats away. She hears one of the guys say, “You think she’ll keep our balls in her desk drawer?”

 

“Yeah, but I can live without balls if she can get me to Lincoln Center,” the other guy says.

 

The first guy shakes his head. “Fucking Fletcher.”

 

“Fucking Fletcher,” the other one agrees.

 

Andrea looks Fletcher up on the school website when she gets back to her room. It isn’t really surprising to learn that Fletcher was the woman who smirked at her after her audition. Andrea stares at her picture. She doesn’t appear powerful or scary.

 

But the stories about her keep piling on top of one another like wreckage on a highway.

 

At the end of her first week, Andrea overhears a conversation in the bathroom about the bloodbath going on in Studio Band.

 

“Tommy’s a fucking emotional wreck,” one girl says.

 

“But he’s still in?” the other girl asks.

 

“Yeah, but if I have to hear him whine about that bitch Fletcher one more time, I’m going to strangle him in his sleep.”

 

“He should feel lucky. My roommate got cut already. She’s been bawling her eyes out ever since.”

 

“Yeah. Fletcher’s a nightmare for the guys, but she’s fucking murder on the girls. None of them ever lasts very long.”

 

The next week it’s the first chair trumpet and the bass player in Nassau Band.

 

“All I’m saying,” the trumpet player says, “sometimes she comes by the lower level bands and skims off the top.”

 

The bass player snorts. “And you think you’re going to be skimmed?”

 

“Maybe.”

 

“Keep dreaming, asshole.”

 

Andrea sees Dr. Fletcher for the first time two days later. She is standing outside a band room talking to a female student. Fletcher is straight line intensity. The girl is slouched against the wall, her eyes focused on her trombone case. Fletcher leans in to place a hand on the girl’s shoulder. The girl raises her head, hopeful, but, she frowns when she meets Andrea’s gaze over Fletcher’s shoulder. Andrea realizes she’s just been standing there staring at them.

 

Fletcher turns and, seeing Andrea, says “Move along, please.”

 

Andrea turns quickly and trips over her feet getting out of the hallway.

 

Within three weeks, Andrea has adopted the maxim that everyone else at Shaffer has long since accepted: if you can’t impress Fletcher, you won’t get anywhere.

 

* * *

 

There is one other girl in Nassau. Her name is Sarah. When she first meets Andrea she tells her “good luck” and sincerely seems to mean it, but she doesn’t go out of her way to talk to Andrea again.

 

She and Sarah form little islands of solitude in a room otherwise filled with camaraderie. Conversations about girls and parties and drugs and sex bound around them. Andrea often wonders if Sarah is having sex. Andrea isn’t. Or hasn’t anyway. Not that she would want to sleep with any of the guys she’s met so far.

 

One month into the semester and Andrea is positive that Ryan Connolly is a gigantic asshat. He is very talented. If Fletcher comes to Nassau Band, he’s primed to be skimmed. But he also knows he’s very talented. Everything for him is golden and shiny—including the girls who always trail him to rehearsal.

 

He couldn’t remember Andrea’s name. For three straight weeks every time he saw her, he said “uh, hey” and waved a hand in her direction like her name was going to become something tangible that he could grasp out of the air. Eventually, he found a solution. He gave her a new name.

 

“What’s up, Ree?” he said, grinning that shiny, golden grin, tapping her on the shoulder with his sticks.

 

Andrea didn’t bother to correct him, so she acquired a new name. But (and doesn’t she hate this) she actually likes Connolly’s offering better than her given name. She rationalizes that re-appropriation is not the same as assent and starts calling herself Ree.

 

The first person she tells is her dad. He is waiting for her outside her dorm on Saturday evening. Other girls have their dates waiting to take them to the movies. Ree has her dad.

 

He hugs her and says, “Hey, Andrea.”

 

“It’s Ree,” she tells him.

 

“Ree,” he says, trying the name out. “Okay. I like it.”

 

She knows he doesn’t. That makes it even better.

 

She wants to offer this name to the guy who works the concession counter at the movie theater. He smiles at her—and he has a nice smile—when he hands her a box of Swedish Fish.

 

“Thank you,” she says instead, glancing briefly up at his face. He nods. She ducks her head back down and goes into the theater.

 

On Monday, Ree arrives at rehearsal early. The only other person there is the alternate trumpet player. He nods at her when she walks into the room and goes back to practicing. Ree pulls out her charts and settles in behind the set.

 

Five minutes before class starts, she looks up and sees Sarah in the doorway with a guy. Ree can’t hear their conversation, but she can see them leaning into each other. She watches the guy cup Sarah’s face in his hands and lean forward to kiss her. Ree feels a twinge of what she thinks might be jealousy.

 

Ree has never been quite sure how to get someone to like her.

 

Tuesday night she walks to the movie theater. When she’s a block away, she realizes that she has no idea whether or not the guy will be working. As it turns out, he is.

 

He smiles when he sees her and asks, “The regular?”

 

“Oh, um, no,” she says. “No.” She forces herself to look at him. “I was just wondering if you maybe wanted to get dinner sometime? Maybe?”

 

He frowns. “Are you asking me out?”

 

“Yes? I mean, yes. Yes, I am,” she says. “You don’t have to agree. I just think you’re, you know, cute, and I thought that maybe you might want to go out. Sometime.”

 

He doesn’t say anything.

 

“Yeah, okay,” she says, turning back toward the exit. “Sorry. Sorry. I’m going to go.”

 

“No, wait,” he says.

 

She turns back.

 

He grins at her. “You think I’m cute?”

 

She can’t find a response.

 

“Yeah, sure,” he says. “Let’s go out. What’s your name?”

 

“Ree,” she says.

 

“Ree, it’s nice to meet you,” he says. “I’m Nick.”

 

“Hi, Nick,” she says.

 

* * *

 

 It’s Saturday night.

 

The Nassau band room was open, so Ree set up there to practice. She likes the space, and no one is around to bother her or tell her to move.

 

Later, she’ll meet Nick, but right now, she has the double-time swing to keep her company. She disappears into the rhythms, everything bleeding outwards on to the set.

 

When she stops and looks up, Dr. Fletcher is standing in the room, staring at her. Fletcher is exquisitely put together which makes Ree keenly aware that she is wearing jeans that she hasn’t washed since mid-September and her very last clean T-shirt that isn’t clean anymore since she spilled coffee on it earlier.

 

Ree stands before she’s even aware of what she’s doing and says, “Sorry. Sorry.”

 

Fletcher says, “Why are you apologizing?”

 

“Because I should be in a practice room?” Ree says, still crouched over the drums.

 

Fletcher steps further into the room. “Are you asking me?”

 

“No?”

 

“Can you only talk in questions?” Fletcher asks.

 

“No?” Ree says. “I mean, no. No, ma’am.”

 

“So, why are you apologizing?” Fletcher asks.

 

“Because I should be in a practice room,” Ree says. “Ma’am.”

 

Fletcher shrugs. “The acoustics are better in here. Don’t apologize. Act like you belong.”

 

Ree nods.

 

“So, stop hovering and sit down.”

 

Ree does.

 

“What’s your name?” Fletcher asks.

 

“Andrea, I mean, Ree. Ree Neiman.” Her hands clutch at her sticks.

 

Fletcher leans her body, compact and lean, against the doorframe. “You know who I am?”

 

“Yes,” Ree says.

 

“So, now’s your chance to impress me. Are you just going to sit there?” Fletcher asks.

 

“I’m just a first year,” Ree says.

 

Fletcher frowns. “Did I ask what year you are?”

 

“No,” Ree says.

 

Fletcher arches her back and pushes herself away from the wall. “Play for me. Rudiments first.”

 

Ree plays.

 

“Stop,” Fletcher says.

 

Ree does.

 

“Double-time swing.”

 

Ree starts.

 

“No,” Fletcher says. She claps her hands together. “Double-time.”

 

Ree follows the speed of the rhythm Fletcher claps out.

 

When Ree stops, Fletcher is already halfway out of the room. “Practice harder, Neiman,” she says. Her heels tap, powerful and strong, against the wood floor and fade down the corridor.

 

Afterwards, in the silence of the room, Ree whispers, “Fuck.”

 

She calls her dad on her way back to the dorm. “So,” she says, “she heard me play.”

 

“How did it go?” he asks.

 

“She said I needed more practice.”

 

“Well, that’s not all bad, is it?” he asks.

 

“No,” she says, but she can’t explain why she feels so deflated.

 

“You practice more, and, eventually, she’ll hear you again. It’s just your first semester.”

 

“Yeah,” she says.

 

It’s just her first semester, and she knows she’s already behind. Time is a weight, banging against her back.

 

“Ree? You still there?”

 

“Yeah. Sorry.”

 

“I think you should see this as a positive,” he says.

 

God bless her dad, she thinks. He doesn’t know anything.

 


	3. Chapter 3

It is entirely surprising when Fletcher puts Ree into Studio Band.

 

Fletcher showed up in Nassau on a Wednesday and listened to the reeds and the brass, dismissing them all with an “okay, thank you, no” before moving on to the drums and requesting a double-time swing. In the end, she asks for Ree.

 

The look on Connolly’s face had been exceedingly satisfying.

 

Ree shows up an hour early to rehearsal on Thursday. No one else shows up until almost nine. There is only one other girl in the band, the fourth chair trombone player.

 

The other drummer looks Ree up and down before telling her to tune the set and turn his pages. His indifference is far more welcome than Connolly’s misguided friendliness.

 

Everyone is perfectly still when Fletcher enters the room, her heels tapping neatly against the floor. She smiles a closed-lipped, tight smile when she sees Ree. Ree (like an idiot) smiles back.

 

Fletcher points in Ree’s direction. “We have a new alternate,” she says. “Ree Neiman. Hopefully she can play better than the last one.”

 

There is some awkward shuffling. For the first time, Ree wonders what exactly happened to the last alternate.

 

They start _Whiplash_. It is difficult, almost impossible to keep up.

 

Fletcher stops twice.

 

The first time, she snaps her fingers at the trumpet alternate. “You listen,” she tells him. “If Barker comes in early again, you go and take his place.”

 

The alternate glances at Barker. “Don’t look at him. Look at me,” Fletcher says. He does. “Do you understand what I’m telling you to do?” He nods. “Okay.”

 

Her gaze swivels to Barker. “I suppose it goes without saying, but you come in early again, you’re done.”

 

Barker nods.

 

The second time, she doesn’t say anything. She stares down the band and then says, “Reeds. Play.” She cuts them off and moves on to the trombones, starting and stopping them quickly. She walks down the line and stops at the fourth chair. Fletcher wraps her fingers around the top of the music stand and says softly, “Metz.”

 

The girl stares at her music, her hands clutching her trombone.

 

“Metz,” Fletcher says. “Look at me.”

 

It is painful to watch Metz try and fail to look up.

 

“Metz, it’s okay,” Fletcher says.

 

With significant effort, Metz’s eyes move upward.

 

“I just want you to play for me,” Fletcher says.

 

Metz does.

 

“Now, what was wrong with that?” Fletcher asks.

 

“I,” Metz says. She swallows. “I don’t know,” Metz says.

 

Fletcher nods. “Okay, then.” She steps away. Metz’s frightened gaze follows her. Fletcher snaps her fingers at the alternate. “Jackson. You are now fourth chair. Good for you. Metz, you’re done.”

 

The alternate stands. Metz doesn’t move. “Metz, what did I say?” Fletcher asks.

 

“That I’m done,” she whispers.

 

“So, get up. Jackson is waiting for your chair.”

 

Metz grabs her trombone and her case and hurries to the door. Ree catches the look she throws at Fletcher’s back before stepping into the hall. It clearly says, in all capital letters, YOU BITCH. There are tears in her eyes. The door shuts.

 

Ree is now the only girl in Studio Band.

 

“Okay,” Fletcher says, turning to the new fourth chair trombone. “Are you ready, Jackson? Are you in tune?”

 

He nods.

 

“How about you, Erickson? Maybe you’re a little flat?” Erickson starts pushing frantically at his main tuning slide. Fletcher raises a hand and says, “Bar 115.”

 

When she cuts them off, she smiles and says, “Better.” She clears her throat. “So, we’ll take ten, and when we get back, we’ll see what Neiman can do.”

 

Ree spends the next ten minutes alternating between preparation and blind panic.

 

She is absurdly thankful when Fletcher counts off significantly under tempo. She gets through about 20 bars and thinks she must be doing okay. She came in late on 17, but Fletcher is letting her play.

 

After bar 30, Fletcher says, “Stop.”

 

She looks over at Ree. “How do you think you’re doing?”

 

Ree glances around the room. The other faces are blank. “Okay. I guess.”

 

“You guess?” Fletcher asks. She walks closer. “Would you like to guess what you did wrong?”

 

Ree forces herself to keep looking at Fletcher. “I came in late in 17.”

 

“Yes. And what else?”

 

Ree struggles to find the right answer.

 

“Don’t know? That’s okay. It’s your first day.” She sounds almost kind. Fletcher waves a hand in the other drummer’s direction. “Tanner, would you care to inform her?”

 

He obliges. “She was rushing.”

 

“Yes. She was,” Fletcher says. “Thank you, Tanner.”

 

She leans closer to Ree. It is oddly intimate, how she easily enters Ree’s space, her hand balanced, almost gently, on Ree’s shoulder. Ree meets her gaze, hopeful. Maybe she’ll get another chance at _Whiplash_. She knows she can get the tempo right if she’s given enough time.

 

The grip on her shoulder tightens.

 

“You think your playing was okay?” Fletcher asks. “It wasn’t even approaching okay. It was a disaster. I would be embarrassed if I were you. Not only because you just walked back about thirty years of progress, but because you actually believed you were doing well. You’re either deaf, stupid, or just inept. And you better hope it’s the last one. The other two can’t be fixed.”

 

She walks back to the front of the room. “Practice harder, Neiman.”

 

She snaps her fingers at Tanner. He stands and takes Ree’s place behind the set.

 

Ree sits down behind him. Her vision is blurring. She blinks hard to clear tears from her eyes.

 

Fletcher must notice. “Go on and cry,” she says. “It’s not like you haven’t lived up to every other stereotype today.”

 

Ree digs her nails into the palms of her hands.

 

It is a small victory that she doesn’t cry until she gets back to her dorm room.

 

* * *

 

Her phone rings at nine. She has been in the practice room since three. Her hands had started to hurt a couple hours ago (maybe?), so she had dry swallowed a couple of Advil she found at the bottom of her backpack.

 

She uncurls her hands and a blister splits open. She licks the blood from her hand and grabs her phone. It’s her dad. Her fingers, indecisive, hover between the reject and accept buttons. She accepts the call.

 

“Hey, Dad.”

 

“Ree, hey! I just wanted to see how it went today,” he says.

 

“It was good.” She balances her phone between her shoulder and ear and wipes her hands on her jeans, hissing when the broken skin around the blister catches on the fabric.

 

“Are you okay?” her dad asks.

 

“Yeah, I’m fine. I just popped a blister,” she says.

 

“How did you get a blister?” he asks.

 

“From drumming,” she says.

 

“How long have you been practicing?” he asks.

 

“I don’t know. A while.”

 

“Well, maybe you should stop for now,” he says.

 

The charts for _Whiplash_ sit on the stand by her elbow. She’s still stuck on the first page because she won’t let herself move on until she has those bars perfected. Now, when she thinks about stopping, the charts whisper “deaf, stupid, inept.” Her eyes start burning again, and, when she exhales, her breath hitches.

 

“Ree?” her dad says. “Ree. What’s wrong?”

 

“Nothing,” she says, but she has to say it around the sob that has lodged itself in her throat, so her response comes out thick and mangled.

 

“Andrea, tell me what’s wrong.”

 

“Nothing’s wrong,” she says.

 

“Then why are you crying?”

 

“I don’t know,” she says. Her phone feels slick in her hand. “I need to go, Dad.”

 

“Not until you tell me what’s going on,” he says.

 

She considers what to tell him. There is an art to lying to her dad. There has to be some element of truth to build from, or he ends up picking apart the story she tells.

 

“Studio Band wasn’t great,” she says.

 

Her dad is quiet, waiting for her to elaborate.

 

“Someone said—” She stops.

 

“Someone said what?” he asks.

 

She expels the words quickly: “Someone said that I’m inept as a drummer.”

 

“Who told you that?” She hears his indignation on her behalf. It makes her feel small, like a child. She does not like that feeling.

 

“You know that’s not true, right?” he asks. She is reminded that her dad knows nothing about music, so his opinion is less than worthless.

 

“Sure,” she says.

 

“What kind of asshole would tell you that anyway?”

 

“It doesn’t matter,” she says.

 

“Was it that woman? Dr. Fletcher?” he asks.

 

Andrea picks a piece of skin off her hand.

 

“It was, wasn’t it?” he says. “How the hell is that teaching? How is that useful?”

 

He rambles on in that vein for a while. She mostly tunes him out.

 

Eventually, she manages to get off the phone. The blood from the blisters has dried on her phone and congealed on her hands. She can’t pick up her sticks anymore without pain lancing across her skin. She shoulders her bag and leaves the practice room.

 

On her way out of the building, she sees Fletcher. There’s a classroom open, and Ree could duck into it, but she doesn’t have the energy for cowardice.

 

Fletcher nods at Ree when she finally notices her. “Working late, Neiman?” she says.

 

Ree nods and rubs at one of the blisters with her thumb.

 

Fletcher glances at Ree’s hands. She raises her eyebrows. “Rubbing alcohol and Epsom salts,” she says. “They’ll heal you up faster than anything else.”

 

She walks past Ree and, because Ree is stupid, she calls out, “Thank you.”

 

Fletcher turns.

 

“I mean, thank you for putting me in Studio Band,” Ree says. “I’m sure I’m going to learn a lot.”

 

Fletcher shakes her head and continues walking down the hall. “Go home, Neiman. And soak your hands.”

 

Ree does. It helps.


	4. Chapter 4

Nick wants to go out the Saturday before Thanksgiving. So, they go out.

 

His mom, unexpectedly, had sent him a plane ticket so he could come home for the holiday. He is leaving on Monday evening when he thought he wouldn’t be leaving at all. He’s not sure what this impromptu trip will do for his continual underlying homesickness.

 

“Eventually,” he says, “I’ll get used to the city, right?”

 

Ree shrugs. “I guess.”

 

Nick takes her hand, and they cross the street.

 

He points out a diner he saw last week and wanted to try, so they go in to eat. Once they’re seated in a booth, Ree peels off her gloves and coat. Following the removal of her hat, her hair becomes untamed. Nick reaches across the table and tucks her hair behind her ear. She rests her foot on top of his under the table.

 

“When do you leave?” he asks her.

 

“I don’t think I’m going home,” she says. Saying this aloud makes it true.

 

Nick frowns. “Your dad’s going to be cool with that?”

 

She shrugs. “I could really use the practice time. I think he’ll get that.” He probably won’t.

 

“You must have a very different relationship with your dad than I have with my mom,” he says.

 

After dinner, they walk back to her dorm. They linger outside, her hand clasped in his. Ree isn’t sure what they’re waiting for.

 

“It’s cold,” she says.

 

“Yeah. So,” he says. “So, I’m going to miss you.”

 

This is startling. It didn’t occur to Ree to think much about Nick’s absence. He would be gone a week. He would be back.

 

“Oh,” she says.

 

He huffs out a small, embarrassed laugh and drops her hand. “Sorry,” he says. “Sorry. That was stupid.”

 

“No,” she says, and she grabs his hand again and leans forward to kiss him.

 

It’s not really a kiss since she just mashed her lips against his, but still, this was clearly the right thing to do. He is smiling when she pulls away, and then he leans forward to kiss her again. He gets them lined up properly, and she thinks “okay, yes, better.”

 

He leaves with the promise that he’ll text her when he gets back.

 

“Okay,” she says.

 

She is already thinking about all the time she will have to practice without having to worry about forgetting dates or answering texts.

 

She wonders why people don’t like long distance relationships.

 

* * *

 

She calls her dad on Monday night and tells him she doesn’t think she will come home for Thanksgiving.

 

“Well, it would have been nice if you had brought this up a couple weeks ago,” he says.

 

“Sorry,” she says. She waits what she thinks is an appropriate amount of time before asking “what do you think?”

 

“I’m not going to force you to come home if you don’t want to. But I will say that we’d all like to see you,” he says.

 

As far as her uncle and cousins are concerned, Ree might as well not exist, but she can acknowledge that her dad does legitimately like to have her around. “Winter break is in a month, and I’ll be home for at least a couple weeks,” she says.

 

Her dad doesn’t respond.

 

“It really would be helpful to have some more practice before the competition,” she says. “I feel like I’m finally starting to get somewhere.”

 

He sighs. “Okay. But you will call on Thursday.”

 

“I will,” she says. “I promise. Thank you.”

 

She slaps an orange post-it (“Thurs. Call Dad”) on her desk. She positions it so that it won’t get covered up. She forgets anyway.

 

It’s dark, and the building is quiet when she abandons the practice room on Wednesday evening. The Nassau Band room is still open, and it really does have better acoustics.

 

She has swallowed _Whiplash_ whole, memorized every bar of it, so she can focus on more than just precision.

 

She stops playing when she hears someone call her name. Fletcher stands in the doorway, a coat draped over her arm.

 

“Jesus, Neiman,” she says. “Don’t you have any friends? Or family for that matter?”

 

“I wanted time to practice,” Ree responds.

 

She watches Fletcher and waits for some scrap of acknowledgement, some indication that Fletcher gets how dedicated she is. Fletcher unfolds and puts on her coat. “You have Whiplash memorized,” she says.

 

Ree shrugs. “Yeah, I mean, yes, ma’am.”

 

“You really must not have any friends.” She turns to leave the room and calls back to Ree, “Are you coming, Neiman? I don’t have all day.”

 

“Oh, um, yeah.”

 

Fletcher is already half-way down the hall by the time Ree catches up to her. She doesn’t say anything until they’re outside the building.

 

“I’m not going anywhere for Thanksgiving either,” Fletcher says.

 

Ree nods.

 

Fletcher pulls on her gloves. “I have a key to the building. I’ll be here at ten tomorrow morning.”

 

Ree doesn’t mistake this for a friendly invitation. “Okay,” she says. She has three alarms in her dorm room that she can set.

 

“Okay,” Fletcher says. She turns and walks up the street, disappearing around the corner.

 

Ree shows up at nine thirty the next morning.

 

Fletcher doesn’t appear until almost noon.

 


	5. Chapter 5

The first set of the competition goes really well. Tanner’s playing is perfect. Ree tells him this. He doesn’t appear to understand what she’s saying. He finally slams the folder into her hands and lopes off.

 

Three minutes later, Tanner corners her in the hallway and asks for the folder. He rifles through it and comes up panicked. The charts from _Whiplash_ are gone. He blames her. She doesn’t have the time to defend herself before Fletcher calls them back into the prep room.

 

As it turns out, Tanner doesn’t have the charts memorized.

 

“Fine,” Fletcher says. “Neiman? What about you?”

 

This is a test, and, for once, Ree knows the right answer. “Yes,” she says.

 

“You fucking bitch,” Tanner says.

 

Fletcher ignores him. “Okay,” she says. “Don’t disappoint me.”

 

Ree knows this means “disappoint me and you’re done in this band.”

 

She nods.

 

Even with Tanner glowering behind her, Ree doesn’t screw up. She plays, she plays well, and it is glorious.

 

On Monday, Fletcher walks into rehearsal and says, “Tanner, stand up.”

 

He does.

 

“Neiman, take his place.”

 

Tanner turns to stare at Ree.

 

“Tanner, come on. We need to get started.”

 

Tanner moves. Ree sits down behind the set.

 

Fletcher nods at her. “Okay. Everyone ready? We’re going to start at bar sixty.”

 

Ree picks up her sticks and follows the beat Fletcher marks out with her hands.

 

* * *

  

On the last day of rehearsal before winter break, Fletcher asks Ree to stay after class.

 

“Any vacation plans?” she asks.

 

This question is strange. (Fletcher reportedly goes out of her way to know absolutely nothing about her students’ personal lives.) Ree doesn’t know how to respond. “No,” she finally says.

 

“So, you’ll have plenty of time to practice,” Fletcher says.

 

“Oh.” Right. She’s the core drummer now. That comes with expectations. “Yes. Definitely,” she says.

 

Fletcher nods. “Good. You don’t want to fall behind. Especially when you already have so much ground to make up.”

 

Ree blinks. It’s a minute before she can say, “Am I not… Was today… Is there something I should be practicing more?”

 

Fletcher stacks her scores and slides them into a folder. “Just practice harder,” she says.

 

“Okay,” Ree says. “Thank you.”

 

She leaves the room, unconsciously picking at the barely healed skin over one of her blisters. It starts to bleed. She licks the blood off as she walks down the hall.

 

* * *

  

Winter break is periods of deep, exhausted sleep interspersed with periods of intense practice.

 

Mr. Henry set her up in her old space at the school, gave her a key, and left her by herself. This is ideal. She is building a future in her head, and it could be beautiful. It could be everything she ever imagined. She just needs to practice harder.

 

Her dad doesn’t understand. He keeps asking her to waste time with him. He wants to take her to lunch or dinner or to the movies. He becomes a fixture to be avoided, placated, or ignored.

 

On her way out of the house on Friday morning, her dad makes her promise to show up for dinner that night.

 

She grabs a granola bar from the pantry and says, “Yeah, sure.”

 

“No. Not ‘yeah, sure,’” he says. “I want you to say that you’re going to show up.”

 

He’s angry. This is surprising.

 

“Okay,” Ree says. “I’ll be here at six.”

 

She shows up at a quarter past. Her uncle’s car is already in the driveway. She enters the house, throws her backpack in the foot of the stairs, and directs a “sorry” in her dad’s direction. She slides into a chair. Dustin stares at her across the table.

 

“What?” she asks.

 

“Your hand is bleeding,” he says.

 

One of the bandages had popped off a blister. “Oh, yeah. Sorry,” she says.

 

She goes to the kitchen and runs water over her hand. She hears someone follow her.

 

“That looks like it hurts,” Aunt Emma says.

 

“It’s fine,” Ree says, turning the faucet off. “I’m used to it.”

 

She fishes some band-aids from her pocket. Aunt Emma takes them from her. “Here. Let me,” she says, and places both of them over the blister.

 

“Your dad wasn’t sure if you were going to make it,” she says.

 

“Well, I’m here,” Ree says.

 

“Yes, you are,” Aunt Emma says.

 

Then, Travis blows into the house all grins and swagger. No one seems too bothered by his late arrival.

 

Ree listens to them talk about politics and football. Aunt Emma nods along to the conversation, like anyone actually gives a shit about her opinions.

 

There’s a lull, and Aunt Emma turns to Ree. “How is school going?”

 

“It’s fine,” Ree says. There is no reason to elaborate.

 

“You making any friends, Andy?” Uncle Frank asks like he already knows the answer to the question.

 

“I have a boyfriend,” she says.

 

“Really?” Dustin asks.

 

“Yeah,” she says.

 

“Huh,” Travis says.

 

Oh, she realizes. They think I’m gay. She starts laughing.

 

“What?” Dustin asks.

 

“Andrea,” her dad says.

 

“Sorry,” she says.

 

Finally, dinner ends.

 

Ree helps her dad clear everything off the table. He washes off the plates and hands them to her, so she can load them in the dishwasher.

 

“You could have been a little nicer,” he says.

 

“What?” she asks.

 

“At dinner,” he clarifies. “You could have been a little nicer.”

 

“Okay,” she says.

 

“You also could have managed to be on time,” he says.

 

“I was ten minutes late,” she says.

 

“Fifteen,” he says.

 

“Travis was later than I was,” she says.

 

“It’s not a contest, and Travis had a reason to be late,” he says.

 

“I had a reason to be late, too. I’m sorry that mine wasn’t related to sports or whatever qualifies as a valid reason to miss dinner,” she says.

 

Her dad slams off the faucet and turns to face her. “Where is this attitude coming from?”

 

“What attitude?” she asks.

 

“This condescending attitude you’ve had ever since you’ve come home. Is this her influence?”

 

“Whose influence? Dr. Fletcher’s?”

 

“Yes. I know she’s important to you right now, but—”

 

“Dr. Fletcher is the best teacher I’ve ever had,” Ree says. “And I think she’s actually starting to like me.”

 

“And her opinion matters that much to you?” he asks. There is something dark lurking underneath this question. Ree can’t be troubled to figure out why it’s there.

 

“Yes, it does,” she says.

 

“Drumming shouldn’t be your whole life,” he says.

 

“Okay,” she says.

 

She takes another plate from her dad and slides it, clanking, into the dishwasher.

 


	6. Chapter 6

Fletcher never tells Ree that she’s doing well, but she doesn’t tell Ree that she’s completely useless either. There are, of course, criticisms and corrections, and when Fletcher speaks them in her calm, sure voice that knows absolutely where and how Ree has failed, they shrivel Ree’s lungs and create a buzz in her brain.

 

Ree lets the comments fester in her head when she practices, and they push her to frenzied, exquisite intensity. Her blisters never have a chance to heal now. Soaking her hands stops providing relief. So, she just keeps washing the blood off, applying Neosporin, and putting on bandages.

 

The other parts of her life become background noise.

 

She calls home once a week. She tries to call when she knows her dad can’t pick up the phone.

 

Her time with Nick is uninspiring. They make out in his dorm, and twice she jerks him off. (He offered, once, to return the favor, his hand skimming along the top of her jeans. She declined.)

 

He keeps texting her at night when she’s in the middle of practicing, and she thinks he might want more of her than she’s willing to give, so one day after rehearsal, she texts him “i think we should stop seeing each other,” turns off her phone, goes to her other classes, and practices through the afternoon.

 

When she turns her phone back on there are two texts from Nick and one voicemail. She listens to the message. He says, “What the fuck, Ree? Call me back.”

 

She does. She lays out her case calmly and rationally. She mentions how hard it is to make it as a female drummer and how she can’t squander her only chance and how she has to stay completely focused and anything peripheral to drumming has to be cut out and if he had goals like she did, he would understand.

 

“Are you fucking with me?” he asks.

 

“No,” she says.

 

“Okay,” he says. “Let’s break up. You’re fucking crazy anyway.”

 

She doesn’t miss Nick. She finds it easier to only be accountable to one person.

 

Eventually, nothing in her life feels real except rehearsal.

 

Some days, when she’s very, very lucky and she’s playing very, very well, Fletcher gives her a barely perceptible nod, and, then, she can remind herself that it is this attempt at greatness—not her dad’s continual, insistent voicemails, not the constant pain in her hands—that actually matters.

 

It will be worth it, she thinks, as she’s peeling off blood stained bandages.

 

It is worth it.

 

* * *

 

 It’s early March, and Fletcher asks Ree to hang around after rehearsal.

 

She hands Ree the charts for _Caravan_. “Double time swing,” she says. “I hope you can handle it.”

 

“I can,” Ree says.

 

“Good,” Fletcher says. “We’re going to start with it tomorrow.”

 

Ree skips her classes and spends eight hours in the practice room.

 

The next morning, Connolly shows up in Studio Band rehearsal. Tanner looks at him and rolls his eyes. Ree just stares.

 

“Hey, Ree,” he says.

 

“What are you doing here?” she asks.

 

Fletcher strides into the room before he can answer. She places her folder on the stand at the front of the room and glances in Connolly’s direction. “We have a new player with us today,” she says. “I wasn’t sure our current drummers would be up to the challenge of _Caravan_ , and I don’t plan to lose the competition this weekend.”

 

Ree stares at Fletcher, searching for some clue why she is doing this. Ree always does what she is told. Her only priority is drumming. In rehearsals, her playing has been spotless.

 

Fletcher’s face reveals nothing.

 

“So,” she says. “I’m going to have each of you play the first thirty bars or so. After that, I’ll make a decision who will play at the competition.” Fletcher nods at Ree. “Neiman, you first.”

 

Ree clears everything out of her head and gives complete focus to the charts. She plays well. She absolutely knows she plays well.

 

Fletcher gives her no indication that this is true. She calls up Tanner next and then Connolly. Once Connolly finishes, he stands up to give Ree her place behind the set.

 

Fletcher stops him. “No. Stay there.”

 

Connolly sits down. Ree is still standing behind him.

 

Fletcher looks at Ree but speaks to Connolly. She says, “Neiman has been temporary core, but I think you might be the better fit, Connolly.”

 

He grins and nods and takes Ree’s place like it’s always been his. Ree gapes at the back of his head.

 

“Sit down, Neiman,” Fletcher says. “Make sure you keep up, so you can turn Connolly’s pages.”

 

After rehearsal ends, Ree goes to Fletcher’s office.

 

“I can play that part,” Ree says.

 

Fletcher raises her eyebrows. “Really? Because I couldn’t tell.”

 

“I played perfectly,” Ree says. “I know I did.”

 

“You rushed 20 through 25,” Fletcher says.

 

Ree knows she is wrong. “No, I didn’t,” Ree says.

 

“I’ve made up my mind, Neiman,” Fletcher says. “Connolly’s playing on Saturday.”

 

Ree’s hands clutch at the chair in front of Fletcher’s desk, fingers digging into the fabric. “No. No. That’s not right.” And before she can stop herself, she says, “This isn’t fair.”

 

Fletcher snorts. “Welcome to the world, Neiman.”

 

“I thought you were on my side,” Ree says.

 

“Why?” Fletcher asks.

 

Ree doesn’t have an answer or, rather, she does, but “because we share the same anatomy” doesn’t seem like an answer Fletcher would like.

 

“Give me a reason, Neiman, or get out of my office,” Fletcher says.

 

Ree leaves.

 

She spends that night peeling strips of skin from her hands.

 

* * *

 

Ree arrives in Dunellen early. She’s sitting by herself backstage when Fletcher arrives.

 

Fletcher gives a number of instructions to the band that Ree ignores, but then she calls, “Neiman.”

 

Ree wants to ignore her. She looks up. “Come here,” Fletcher says. Ree does.

 

“Don’t come on stage,” she says. “We don’t need two alternates.” Fletcher steps away and turns to Connolly. “Are you ready?”

 

His response comes, bright and eager. Ree can barely hear it. A buzz has started in her head. It grows frantic, pounding in her ears.

 

“Wait,” she says.

 

Fletcher turns, eyebrows raised.

 

Ree wants to say that she should be the alternate, not Tanner. She wants to say that she’s been working her ass off for months and it’s not fair, it’s not fucking fair that Connolly just gets to come in and take her position. She wants to say that Fletcher set her up for failure, that she must have wanted Ree to fall on her face.

 

She only gets out a pathetic “I—” before Fletcher turns away.

 

“Don’t embarrass yourself, Neiman,” she says.

 

Ree watches the others file onstage. She should leave. She has no reason to stay. She stays anyway.

 

They win the competition. Fletcher (that bitch) is all smiles when she gives credit to her band.

 

Connolly approaches Ree afterwards. “Hey,” he says.

 

“Hey,” she responds.

 

His look is pitying so before he can say anything else she says, “I need a ride back to the city.”

 

Connolly blinks. “Oh. I came here with a couple of the guys. But, yeah. I’m sure they could give you a lift.”

 

“Great,” she says.

 

She is squeezed into the back between Connolly and one of the trumpet players. She occupies as little room as possible, shrinking and folding in on herself. The trumpet player stays on his side, but Connolly’s hand keeps brushing at her knee, his shoulder rubbing up against hers. She wishes he would stay in his fucking space.

 

No one says much on the drive back.

 

They get back to Shaffer, and Connolly lingers with her on the sidewalk. “You know,” he says. “There’s a party later. In Whiting Hall. You should come.”

 

“Yeah, sure,” she says.

 

“Okay. Cool.” He knocks his fist against her shoulder. “See you later, Ree.”

 

* * *

 

Ree goes back to her dorm. She sheds her clothing and pulls on the jeans and t-shirt that are draped over her desk chair.

 

She sits on her bed. She falls asleep. When she wakes up, it’s almost ten thirty. She thinks about going to the party. She doesn’t really want to go. She goes anyway.

 

It isn’t hard to find.

 

The top floor of Whiting Hall is all seniors and all suites. Four of the suites are open, and people are sitting in the hallway and leaning in the doorways. There is talking and laughing and a bass beat that is far too loud.

 

She walks into one of the rooms. No one acts like she shouldn’t be there. No one notices her at all. She perches on the arm of a couch where two people have started making out. Someone touches her on the shoulder. She looks over and up, and Connolly is standing beside her. He motions for her to come with him to one of the other suites.

 

She follows him into someone’s room. He sits on the bed. She sits beside him.

 

“Pass that over here,” he says, and then there’s a joint in his hand. She watches him inhale slowly.

 

He passes the joint to her. “I don’t know what to do with this,” she says.

 

He laughs and says, “Inhale.”

 

She does. She coughs, and then his hand is on her back.

 

“Just wait,” he says. “It gets better.”

 

This is true. After the second and third hits, everything becomes more tolerable. She also realizes that she is sitting very close to Connolly. She places a hand on his leg, and he looks at her.

 

“What happened to your girlfriend?” she asks.

 

“What girlfriend?” he asks.

 

“Okay,” she says.

 

She leans forward and kisses him. He does not kiss her back. She pulls away, ducks her head, and says, “Sorry.”

 

A minute passes, and then he brushes hair away from her face and says, “You wanna get out of here?”

 

She follows him back to his dorm room.

 

“My roommate’s gone for the night,” he says as he closes the door.

 

“Okay,” she says.

 

He places his hands on her hips and kisses her. She opens her mouth for him when he licks at her lips. He seems to have a better idea of what he’s doing than Nick did.

 

He pulls her shirt off over her head, and she toes off her shoes.

 

She jerks a little when he reaches behind her back to unhook her bra. “I’ve never,” she says.

 

He kisses her on the neck and says, “I figured,” and pops her bra open.

 

Later, when he’s thrusting into her, she thinks how weird it is that Connolly’s fucking her. She wonders how many other girls he’s fucked. When it’s over, it occurs to her that she’s not a virgin anymore. It was easy, so much easier than she thought it would be, to lose that aspect of herself.

 

“Are you okay?” he asks her.

 

“Sure,” she says.

 

“You can stay if you want,” he says.

 

“I probably shouldn’t,” she says, and she gets up from the bed to find her underwear.

 

She stops at the door. “So,” she says, “I guess I’ll see you.”

 

“Yeah,” he says. “Let me know if you want to, you know, do this again.”

 

“Right,” she says.

 

She walks back to her dorm, stopping in the bathroom down the hall from her room to pee and wash her face. The regular sounds of Saturday night echo around her. The sounds muffle once she has closed herself in her room. She lays down on her bed, curling her legs into her stomach.

 

She wakes up with an ache in her back. She rolls over and goes back to sleep.


	7. Chapter 7

After Ree spends a week in Studio Band sitting beside Tanner and behind Connolly, Fletcher calls Ree into her office.

 

“I have a class,” Ree says.

 

“This won’t take long,” Fletcher says. She points to a chair. “Sit.”

 

Ree does.

 

“So, Connolly’s playing fairly well, don’t you think?” Fletcher asks.

 

“Yes,” Ree says because there is no other answer to this question.

 

“He’s got a lot of natural talent,” Fletcher says, leaning back in her chair and crossing her legs. “But that’s not what I brought you in here to discuss.” She neatly brushes a stray hair from her face. “I’ve seen a lot of kids come through here. Some very talented. Some very dedicated. Some who just needed the right push to realize their potential. So, I have a good record of knowing who’s going to make it and who isn’t. But you know this.”

 

Ree nods.

 

“I wanted to give you a chance in Studio Band to see what you were capable of achieving,” Fletcher says. “To see if you could overcome some of your more glaring deficiencies as a drummer.”

 

There is something ugly forming in the air. Ree can feel the pressure of it against her skin. The air around her sags heavy with sour expectancy.

 

Fletcher leans forward. “I’ve watched you play for three months now, and I have to tell you, Ree, you’re okay as a drummer, but you don’t have what it takes to make it professionally.”

 

The pressure breaks, but it leaves the room without air. It leaves Ree without words.

 

Fletcher does not share her affliction.

 

“Obviously, you can’t stay in my band,” she says. “Connolly’s going to be the core and Tanner the alternate. I’ve informed Mr. Kramer of the situation, and he knows to expect you back in Nassau. You can try to work your way up from there.” She pauses and folds her hands neatly, elegantly on top of her desk. “But I think you should seriously look into transferring.”

 

A hotness builds behind Ree’s eyes. She blinks rapidly.

 

“I know this is hard to hear, but I pride myself in always being honest with my students. I think it’s kinder to tell you this now than to allow you to fail at audition after audition after graduation,” Fletcher says. “Now you can find something that is more suited to your skills.”

 

Ree’s fingers are shaking when she reaches up to wipe tears from her face.

 

“Okay. Well, you should go,” Fletcher says. “Don’t want to be late for class.”

 

Ree doesn’t remember the walk back to her dorm.

 

She finds herself standing in her room, staring blankly at the wall. Finally, she pulls the blanket off her bed, wraps herself in it, and lays down on the floor beside the window.

 

She sobs until her stomach aches.

 

* * *

  

When she wakes up, she has a blinding headache and her eyes are gummy and swollen. She goes back to sleep. When she wakes again, it is dark outside. The headache is still persistently pushing against her forehead.

 

She doesn’t know why she goes to Fletcher’s office. Maybe she expected Fletcher to be there. Maybe she thought she could argue her way back into the band. (But, if she’s honest, she knows there’s not anything else that she can say. There are, however, things she can do.)

 

Other people are still wandering around the building and holed up in practice rooms. A soprano is singing something in a language Ree can’t recognize. A flute player is playing the same three measures over and over. A trumpet player is practicing scales. In a classroom, the members of a study group are yelling at each other.

 

Ree tries the doorknob to Fletcher’s office. It turns under her hand. This is fortuitous. Ree enters and switches on the desk lamp.

 

She walks slowly around the room, looking at the pictures and awards on the walls and shelves. There is a lot of glass in the room. There is a water cooler (the plastic bottle at the top mostly full) nudged up against a filing cabinet. She moves to the desk. None of the drawers are locked. She doesn’t find anything interesting except an old photo of a man and a little girl. The little girl has Fletcher’s eyes and the man’s nose.

 

She places the photo on top of the desk. She pulls the papers out of each drawer and scatters them around.

 

Each picture is carefully removed from the wall and placed on the floor. Ree steps on each, listening to the glass fracture under her weight. She pulls books off the shelves and rifles through them. She reads the opening paragraph of a book called The History of Jazz and then rips out pages from its middle. She deposits the other books on the floor and kicks each open with the toe of her shoe. She tosses little glass and plastic baubles on the floor. Some of them crack. Some of them don’t. She leaves the awards untouched.

 

It takes some doing, but she manages to get the bottle detached from the top of the water cooler. She discovers that there is an art to destruction through water. Too much can’t spill in one place if you want to saturate everything and turn a whole life into nothing but soggy pulp and broken glass.

 

In the end, she is satisfied with her efforts.

 

She leaves the bottle, dripping the remainder of its contents on the desk.

 

The air is cool when she leaves the building and walks back to the dorms.

 

* * *

 

 The rumors start Tuesday. Someone trashed Fletcher’s office.

 

On Wednesday, Ree gets an email that requests her presence in Gehring Hall at two in the afternoon. When she gets there, she is placed in a room with very nice woman named Julie Crane who asks her to detail her actions on Monday.

 

“Why?” Ree asks.

 

“We’re investigating the property damage that occurred on Monday evening,” she says. “Looking at the security camera footage from the north entrance, we know you were in the building.”

 

“Am I in trouble?” she asks.

 

“No,” Ms. Crane says. “But I do need to know what you were doing on Monday.”

 

“I went to the practice room. I practiced for a while. Then, I went back the dorms,” Ree says.

 

“Did you see anyone go into Dr. Fletcher’s office or go into the part of the building where Dr. Fletcher’s office is located?” Ms. Crane asks.

 

“No,” Ree says.

 

“Did you go into that part of the building?”

 

“No.”

 

“Okay.” Ms. Crane writes something down on a legal pad. She looks up at Ree and gives her a smile. It is not reassuring. “We may be calling you back to meet with us in the next couple days. If we deem it necessary, we might also call your parents.”

 

Ree leaves the office.

 

She receives another email that requests her presence in Dr. Harvard’s office on Friday at four thirty. The email informs her that her parent and/or guardian will also be present at the meeting. When she checks her phone, she has a voicemail from her dad. They have not spoken since January. She calls him.

 

“Hi, Andrea,” he says. “Apparently, I’m coming to your school tomorrow. You want to tell me why?”

 

“They didn’t tell you?” she asks.

 

“I spoke to a very nice woman who mentioned something about property damage and an investigation and that you might be involved,” he says. “Are you involved?”

 

“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” she says. This might as well be the truth. She barely remembers anything from Monday.

 

“You explained that to them?” he asks.

 

“Yes.”

 

“So, why do they still want to meet with you?”

 

She pauses, thinks about the best words to use when engaging in deceit. “There was a… thing with Dr. Fletcher. And me.”

 

There is a tonal shift, and suddenly her dad’s voice is all anger and concern. “What happened? What did she do to you?”

 

“I’m not in Studio Band anymore,” she says.

 

There is a pause. Then, he says, “Okay. It will be okay. We’ll figure it out.”

 

He doesn’t sound very concerned. Pain must not translate over phone lines.

 

“Thanks, Dad,” she says and ends the call.

 

She shows up late to the meeting on Friday. Her dad is already there. He is sitting on one side of a desk and a man (Dr. Harvard, Ree supposes) sits on the other side. Her dad doesn’t look happy.

 

“Andrea,” Dr. Harvard says. “Please have a seat.”

 

She does. Her dad lays a hand on her arm.

 

“As I was telling your father, there is no way to determine who was responsible for the property damage that occurred in Dr. Fletcher’s office last Monday given the general level of activity in the building,” he says.

 

“Okay,” she says.

 

“However,” he continues, “we have determined that there were certain individuals present in the building who had more, let’s say, motive than others given their histories with Dr. Fletcher. Unfortunately, Andrea, you are one of them.” He pauses. “I understand you were recently cut from Studio Band?”

 

“Yes,” she says.

 

“I know that must have been quite upsetting for you,” he says.

 

She doesn’t answer.

 

Her dad leans forward in his chair. “Are you trying to force a confession out of my daughter?”

 

“No, I’m just letting her know why we believe she could be involved in this incident,” Dr. Harvard says. “She is entitled to that information.”

 

“Yeah. Sure,” her dad says. “I still don’t understand why you’re not looking more at Dr. Fletcher. Wouldn’t it make more sense to examine whatever she did that caused this… reaction?”

 

“As I mentioned before, that is an avenue we’re pursuing,” Dr. Harvard says.

 

“Who do you people think is the real victim here?” her dad asks.

 

It’s interesting, Ree thinks, that her dad sees her as a victim. She wonders if she is a victim.

 

“As I said, Mr. Neiman,” Dr. Harvard says, “we will also be exploring any complaints made recently against Dr. Fletcher.” He turns to Ree. “However, we would also like it if you, Andrea, would consent to seeing a therapist twice a week for the remainder of the semester. We are asking this of all the students that we suspect could be potentially responsible.”

 

Her dad squeezes her arm. She looks at him.

 

“This isn’t a requirement,” her dad says. “They can’t make you do anything.”

 

“No,” Dr. Harvard says. “It’s not a requirement. But after quite a bit of discussion, we do feel that this would be the best avenue for you going forward. Do you understand?”

 

She understands the path of least resistance. “Yes,” she says. “That’s fine. Do you need me to sign something?”

 

“Andrea,” her dad says.

 

“Dad, it’s fine. It doesn’t matter,” she says.

 

She signs a couple of forms and gets a timeline for when she will need to schedule her first appointment at the health center.

 

Her dad keeps his hand on her back the entire way out of the building.

 

“You didn’t have to do that,” he says.

 

“I know,” she says.

 

“Andrea,” he says.

 

She prepares herself to meet his frustration. She is not prepared when he embraces her. She stands awkwardly in his arms. He lets her go.

 

“Come on,” he says. “Let me buy you dinner.”

 

She can’t find the words to tell him no.


	8. Chapter 8

 

The days groan on.

 

In Nassau Band, she turns pages for some new drummer and allows the blisters on her hands to heal. (Mr. Kramer stopped letting her play after her first two tries proved disastrous.) She sits in her classes and draws pictures of flowers and clouds in her notebooks.

 

On Wednesdays and Fridays, she goes to talk to a counselor for an hour. The woman she sees is named Charlotte. They talk about stress management and high expectations. They do not talk about Ree’s dad or her absent mother or Dr. Fletcher.

 

“Eventually we will have to talk about these things, Ree,” Charlotte says.

 

“Do you have a stress ball?” Ree asks.

 

Charlotte sighs.

 

Ree and Connolly make good use of her single room. Sometimes they go to parties, and they get high. She likes getting high. It makes sex a whole lot better. They do not talk about drumming or Studio Band. They do not talk about much at all.

 

She tells Charlotte about Connolly.

 

“What do you like about this type of casual relationship?” Charlotte asks.

 

“It’s not complicated,” she says. “He doesn’t put any demands on me.”

 

“Other than sex?”

 

“Right,” Ree says. “Other than sex.”

 

Charlotte twirls her pen in her fingers. “What’s interesting to me, Ree, is that from the way you talk about Connolly, it doesn’t seem that you like him very much.”

 

“He’s fine,” Ree says.

 

“But you could have elected to have a casual relationship with any number of people. Why did you pick Connolly?”

 

“He was available.”

 

“That’s the only reason?” Charlotte asks.

 

“Yes,” Ree says.

 

“Does that seem like the best reason to start a relationship?”

 

“I don’t know. Isn’t college supposed to be for experimentation?” Ree asks.

 

“Healthy experimentation can be good, yes,” Charlotte says. “I’m not so sure if what you’re doing is healthy.”

 

Ree shrugs. “Does the health center still have condoms available for free?” she asks.

 

Charlotte sighs.

 

Somewhere around the middle of April, Ree stops eating. It isn’t really a conscious decision. She just doesn’t feel hungry anymore. After she realizes she’s gone a full day and a half without food, she puts a reminder in her phone to eat something around noon and something around five. Sometimes she eats cereal or granola or toast. Sometimes she ignores the reminders.

 

She doesn’t tell Charlotte about this. Charlotte doesn’t ask. She asks about Ree’s coursework.

 

“It’s fine,” Ree says. “I think I might have failed a test the other day.”

 

“Okay. Did you not feel prepared?”

 

“Not really. But I didn’t really study either.”

 

“Why didn’t you study?” Charlotte asks.

 

“I forgot about the test,” Ree says.

 

“Maybe you should get a planner. Or a study partner. Do you have friends in any of your classes?” Charlotte asks.

 

“Yeah,” Ree says. She doesn’t know anyone in any of her classes.

 

“How is Nassau Band going?”

 

“It’s fine,” Ree says. “I’m just turning pages, so it’s not much work.”

 

“Are you angry about that?” Charlotte asks.

 

“About what?”

 

“Not playing.”

 

“Not really,” Ree says. She pulls her feet up on to the couch. “I haven’t practiced in a month, so I’m not any good anyway.”

 

“You haven’t been practicing? At all?”

 

Ree taps her fingers against her shoes. “Nope.”

 

“Why do you think that is?” Charlotte asks.

 

“I don’t know,” Ree says.

 

Charlotte leans forward in her chair. “You know what? I bet you do.”

 

Ree rests her head against her knees. “Well, maybe I don’t want to do this anymore. Maybe I want to do something else.”

 

“That seems like a big step to me,” Charlotte says.

 

Ree shrugs.

 

“Well, what else would you want to do?”

 

Ree shrugs.

 

“Come on, Ree,” Charlotte says. “Give me something.”

 

Ree thinks. “It’s really nice not to have blisters on my hands all the time,” she finally says.

 

Charlotte shakes her head. “Okay, Ree. Okay.”

 

* * *

 

Her dad calls and wants to take her to dinner. “You know, before you get too busy with everything at the end of the semester,” he says.

 

She meets him on a Friday outside her dorm.

 

(She had a conversation with Charlotte about this dinner.

 

“Have you been talking to your dad more often?” she asked.

 

“I guess,” Ree said.

 

“Are you talking about anything other than the weather?” she asked.

 

“I guess,” Ree said.

 

Charlotte sighed.)

 

Her dad makes her choose where to eat. They end up going to a café a couple blocks away.

 

She pulls the crust off her sandwich and tears it into small pieces.

 

“You’re not hungry?” her dad asks.

 

“Not really,” she says.

 

The look her dad gives her makes her feel like crying. She swallows this impulse down with a mouthful of water.

 

He asks questions about finals and the end of the semester. She can’t tell him she’s probably going to fail most of her classes, so she says, “I’m thinking about transferring.”

 

“Oh,” he says.

 

“It wouldn’t be until next spring since I missed all the deadlines,” she says. “I don’t really want to take a semester off, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense to stay enrolled at Shaffer. So maybe I could come home. For a while?”

 

Her dad stares at her.

 

“Dad? What do you think?”

 

He shakes his head. “Sorry. This is just really… unexpected. Have you thought it through?”

 

“Yeah,” she says.

 

“Have you really thought it through?”

 

“Yes, Dad,” she says. “Of course I have.” She can’t help the annoyance that creeps into her voice.

 

He holds his hands up. “Fine, that’s fine, I only—”

 

She cuts him off, pouring words out of herself and piling them on the table. “I’m okay at drumming, but I don’t really have what it takes to be great.” (She is so proud that when she says this her throat stays clear and her eyes stay dry even though the pool of disappointment in her chest has opened up into an ocean, wide, dark, and deep.) “So, I really should be more realistic about my future and find something more suited to my skills.”

 

Her dad doesn’t say anything.

 

“I thought you’d be happy,” she says.

 

“Why would I be happy?” he asks.

 

She crumples her napkin in her hand. “You never wanted me to go to Shaffer in the first place.”

 

“I never said that,” he says.

 

“You didn’t have to say it.”

 

“Andrea,” he says. “Why do you want to transfer?”

 

“I already told you. I don’t have what it takes,” she says.

 

“Obviously that’s not true. Otherwise they never would have let you in,” he says.

 

She has constructed this argument in her head a thousand times, and a thousand times it has been destroyed. “I guess they made a mistake,” she says.

 

They sit in silence. The waitress comes and refills Ree’s water glass and leaves the check.

 

“I came across some recordings of you when I was cleaning out the house last weekend,” her dad says. “Old recitals, rehearsals, some were just of you messing around on your drum set. You were so happy.”

 

She can almost remember this.

 

“So, if drumming still makes you happy, you should stay at Shaffer. I don’t care what you say. I don’t care what anyone says. They let you in for a reason,” he says. “If drumming doesn’t make you happy, then we’ll figure something else out.” He folds a napkin and reaches across the table to wipe tears from her face. She hadn’t even realized she had been crying. “Okay?”

 

She nods.

 

“It will be okay. I promise,” he says. “Now, eat your sandwich.”

 

* * *

 

Because she doesn’t have blisters on her hands and she has to pick at something else, Ree stops by Fletcher’s (newly refurbished) office.

 

She knocks on the door.

 

“Come in,” Fletcher calls.

 

She looks up, sees Ree in the doorway, and points to a chair before returning her attention to a stack of forms on her desk. “How are you doing in Nassau Band?” she asks.

 

“I really like Mr. Kramer,” Ree says.

 

Fletcher nods. She glances at Ree’s hands. “How has your practicing been going?”

 

“Fine,” Ree says.

 

Fletcher hums an acknowledgement, and Ree knows that Fletcher knows she hasn’t practiced in weeks.

 

“So, what can I do for you?” Fletcher asks.

 

“I’ve been thinking about what you said. About transferring,” Ree says. “I think I’m going to do it.”

 

Fletcher nods. “Do you know where you’re going to go?”

 

“Probably NYU. I got in there last year, so I think I can probably get in again.” Ree stares at Fletcher. She waits for a reaction, for some flicker, some acknowledgement that she isn’t doing the right thing, that she should stay. Fletcher’s face reveals nothing.

 

“It’s a great school,” she says. “I’m sure you’ll find a program there that suits you.”

 

Ree nods.

 

Fletcher signs her name on a sheet of paper and then looks up at Ree, eyebrows raised. “Was that all?”

 

“Yes,” Ree says. “I just wanted you to know.”

 

“Okay,” Fletcher says. “Well, I have work to do.”

 

Ree shuffles out of her office.

 

Whatever door, whatever possibility that had still been open in her head closes and locks.

 

* * *

 

 Ree doesn’t bother to study for her exams, so when Charlotte asks her how she’s dealing with the stress of finals week, she shrugs and says, “Okay.”

 

“Any classes you’re worried about?”

 

“Not really.” Ree picks some skin off her lips. “I think I’m probably going to fail out.”

 

“You don’t feel confident about your exam results?” Charlotte asks.

 

Ree shrugs.

 

“Do you even care about your exam results?” Charlotte asks.

 

“Not really,” Ree says.

 

“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” Charlotte says.

 

Ree frowns. “What does that mean?”

 

“Right now, I don’t think that you have enough energy to care about anything,” Charlotte says.

 

Ree doesn’t have a response for her.


	9. Chapter 9

In mid-May, Ree’s dad helps her move out the dorms.

 

Grades come in. Ree gets an email informing her that she’s on academic probation, so she’ll have to meet with her advisor the first week of June.

 

She’s still planning to transfer. Her dad told her she will have to get a job if she intends to take the semester off. She fills out the job applications he leaves for her. She also does a lot of sleeping. She attempts to take an interest in eating.

 

Her drum set rests in the corner of her room. She drapes articles of clothing across it.

 

One night, her dad asks her why she doesn’t practice. She shrugs. The next day, when she gets home from a job interview, she goes upstairs to find all the clothing neatly folded and placed on her bed. Her sticks are out as are the charts she had mistakenly brought home.

 

She goes downstairs to find her dad.

 

“Why?” she asks.

 

“Why what?” he responds.

 

“My drum set and the sticks and the charts,” she says.

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says.

 

She rolls her eyes and goes back upstairs. She tosses all her clothes back on the set, tears up the charts, and throws her stick bag in the back of her closet.

 

She takes the bus into the city for her meeting at Shaffer. It doesn’t take very long, and it mostly consists of Ree nodding while her advisor talks about strategies for success and taking a more forgiving course load in the fall. After he has finished, she says, “I think I’m going to transfer.”

 

“Oh,” he says. “Okay.”

 

And then she’s not enrolled at Shaffer anymore.

 

She gets a job at a party store in town. She gets really good at wrapping presents and blowing up balloons.

 

Her dad gets tickets for the first night of the JVC fest.

 

“Why?” she asks.

 

“I thought you might want to go,” he says.

 

“Why?”

 

“We don’t have to go. I just thought it would be something you might enjoy,” he says. He sounds tired. She can appreciate that. She’s tired too.

 

“No, it’s fine. We can go,” she says.

 

So, they get dressed up, and they go into the city.

 

The concert is good. At least she assumes it’s good. She doesn’t really hear most of it because of the buzzing in her head. She has to leave during the second to last number because she’s having a hard time breathing. She charges up the aisle and into the lobby. She shakes off her dad when he tries to touch her and wants to tell him “don’t, don’t, stop,” but she can’t get enough air.

 

Then, there are other people, and someone gets her to sit down, and someone else forces her head down between her knees.

 

Later, her dad says, “Well, I guess this was a bad idea.”

 

She laughs so hard, she starts crying. (Or maybe she just starts crying. It’s hard to tell.)

 

He leaves (“just for a minute”) to go find her some water.

 

Ree is still concentrating on breathing when she sees Fletcher across the lobby, standing with a group of people. There’s no reason for Ree’s pulse to jump. She should have expected Fletcher to be here.

 

Ree’s legs are still shaking when she stands up, but she manages to cross the room without collapsing or passing out. When she’s a few steps away from Fletcher, one of the women in the group notices her. She says to Fletcher, “I think someone wants to speak to you.”

 

Fletcher turns.

 

“Hello,” Ree says.

 

“Hello, Ree,” Fletcher says. She turns to the rest of the group. “Ree was one of my former students.”

 

Someone is kind enough to ask what Ree plays.

 

Fletcher answers for her. “She doesn’t play anymore. She transferred out of Shaffer this spring.” She pauses and then says, “But she was a good drummer. A lot of potential.”

 

The word “what” gets stuck in Ree’s mouth.

 

“She just didn’t have the drive.” Fletcher turns her head and focuses her gaze on Ree. “It’s okay. A lot of people can’t handle adversity.” She reaches out, her hand brushing Ree’s shoulder. “Well, it was nice to see you, Ree. Good luck.”

 

Ree watches her walk away.

 

Late that night, once she’s sure her dad is asleep, Ree carefully carts her drum set out to the backyard. She lays each piece gently on the lawn before going up to retrieve the next one. She can’t find lighter fluid in the garage, but she does find an old wooden baseball bat. This is less than ideal but still better than nothing.

 

Watching the bat tear through the bass drum, she finds there is pleasure to be had in destruction. She moves methodically, trashing each piece in turn. She is pounding dents into the cymbals when she is abruptly pulled away from the set. She struggles against the arms that constrain her.

 

Her dad’s voice, frantic, calls her back to herself.

 

“Andrea! Andrea, stop!”

 

She goes limp. Sweat drenches her hair and drips from her face. Her chest heaves with hard, heavy breaths.

 

Her dad lets her go. He pries the bat from her fists and tosses it away into the dark. “What the hell are you doing?” he asks.

 

She turns to look at the set. It’s not as damaged as she had hoped. Fire would have been better. Burn it all down.

 

“Andrea, don’t look at that. Look at me,” her dad says. “What are you doing?”

 

She tries to answer. She really does. But when she opens her mouth, she starts to sob, and she can’t stop.

 

Her dad wraps his arms around her and holds her tightly, fiercely. She tries to stop the awful, broken noises ripping their way out of her.

 

Once she’s reduced to soft hiccupping, he says, “It’s okay. It’s all over now.” He cups his hand around the back of her neck. “Let’s get you to bed.”

 

She looks toward the drum set. “What about—”

 

He shakes his head. “We’ll deal with everything in the morning.”

 

When she is curled up on her bed and her dad is about to shut the door to her room, she calls to him. “Dad?”

 

He pauses in the doorway. “Yeah?”

 

“I don’t want to play the drums anymore,” she says.

 

He exhales something that is far too pained to be a real laugh. “Yeah. I figured,” he says.

 

“I don’t know what else to do,” she says.

 

Her future is a blurry mess. If she thinks about it for too long, she starts to feel light-headed and jumpy.

 

“That’s okay,” her dad says. “You’ll figure it out. Just give it time.”

 

Ree nods. She can do that. Right now, all she has is time.

 

In the morning, her dad piles her drum set into trash bags. On Monday night, he places the bags on the curb with the rest of the garbage. On Tuesday, the garbage truck arrives and leaves.

 

And then her drum set is gone.


	10. Chapter 10

As it turns out, Ree has some talent for storytelling.

 

She owes her roommate for this discovery.

 

Ree’s roommate at NYU is also named Andrea (though she goes by Andi). Neither of them finds this coincidence very funny.

 

Andi is a film major, and on a Sunday in late February, she walks back into the dorm room and declares herself too hung over to write the plot outline she needs for her Storytelling Strategies course.

 

She flings herself face down on her bed and says, “I’ll give you fifty dollars if you write it for me, Ree.”

 

Ree doesn’t feel like writing her comp paper, so she says, “Okay.”

 

Andi cracks an eye open to look at her. “Really?”

 

“Sure.”

 

“Awesome,” Andi says. She pulls her comforter over her head. “The assignment is in my bag somewhere. Money’s in my wallet. I’ll get it for you once you finish.”

 

It takes her three hours to write. Andi gets the best grade in the class (“the fucking professor went fucking nuts,” she said), so a month later, Ree is roped into helping Andi write the script.

 

At the end of the semester, Andi tries to convince her to prepare a portfolio and transfer into the film school. Ree declines without providing an explanation.

 

Still, after graduation, she ends up following Andi out to L.A. (“I mean, come on, what else are you going to do with an English major?” Andi asked.) Ree tells her dad it will probably only be for a year, and then she’ll come back and get an MAT or something. But, then, it’s five years later, and she and Andi are still living in the same shitty apartment.

 

Andi gets tired of working on other people’s stories. (Ree doesn’t really care because a job’s a job. She works on a bunch of B horror films because, apparently, she has an ear for villains.)

 

One morning, Andi wakes Ree at four and says, “We’re going to make our own film.”

 

Ree yawns and says, “Okay.”

 

“So, get up. We’re having a brainstorming session,” Andi says. “I made coffee.”

 

Andi drums her fingers against the counter while Ree washes out a mug.

 

“What about that thing we wrote in college?” she asks.

 

“What?” Ree asks.

 

“The thing about the abusive teacher,” Andi says.

 

“That was shit, Andi,” Ree says. (And, fuck, she does not want to go back there because she knows if she does, she’s going to get destructive again.)

 

“Well, yeah. But we can make it better. I think the story has a lot of potential.”

 

This is how they end up writing a script and—after obtaining some crowdsourced funding—making a short film about jazz drumming. (This is also how Ree ends up going back on Celexa because the film reopened that dangerous, scarred place in her head. She wonders if she should still be this damaged after eight years. Andi tells her that she should smoke more pot.)

 

The film goes to festivals and people are interested but not that interested because they’re two girls making a movie about two women and the characters don’t even act like real women and maybe they should try the movie with two male leads. Then, they’d be cooking with gas.

 

Ree is mostly glad that no one wants the film (failures should be buried and not displayed on massive screens in surround sound), but Andi is getting despondent, so, one night, while sitting in the bar where they drink for free, Ree suggests that maybe they could make some changes.

 

Andi says, “Fuck that. I have a fucking vision, dammit, and I’m not going to compromise for anyone.”

 

Finally, Andi finds a festival in the middle of nowhere that only screens movies by women, and they enter the film and drive two days in Andi’s fucking Geo Metro to get there. Ree thinks the whole endeavor is going to be a waste of time, but there are a couple people there who are as crazy as Andi is, and they get really excited about the film and decide to finance it.

 

So, Ree polishes the script (and tries to remember that this story is not about her, it is not, it is not, it is fiction and lots of people get fucked over, it happens all the time). There are all sorts of decisions that are made about casting and locations and sets and costumes, and Ree vaguely agrees to a lot of things without knowing what she’s agreeing to at all.

 

The film turns out to be pretty good. Or at least Andi thinks it does. Ree gets high before the premiere, and lets Andi talk to the press.

 

The film opens in New York and L.A. the same weekend. The reviews are good.

 

The Friday after the release, Ree gets a postcard in the mail. The picture on the front is the New York City skyline. On the back, scrawled in neat handwriting, it says “Good job, Neiman.”

 

Ree finds Fletcher’s email address on Shaffer’s website. She stares at a blinking cursor for a long time before typing “Fuck you, Terry.”

 

She sends the message before she can reconsider.

 

She tears up the postcard and throws it in the trash.

 

Fifteen minutes later, she fishes out the pieces and tapes them back together.

**Author's Note:**

> So, that's it. I hope you guys didn't hate the ending too much, but feel free to leave your vitriol in the comments. :)
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has read and commented. I appreciate all of you more than I can say.


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